Gearing up again in ICC

I had a bucket load of luck during the first part of Wrath, and was in some of the best rogue gear. My luck really seemed to fall away dramatically after that, in Ulduar I had no leather drops at all despite going for a solid 3 months without skipping a raid and being at every guild first kill. This combined with burn out, and a sub-par raid in 3.2 made me take a few month break from raiding. Icecrown has really got me back into the scene though. Most of the first bosses have two or three bits of gear useful for me, and so far I've had a couple drops. Also unlike in Ulduar the badges are actually useful and there are also reputation rewards. Icecrowns gear structure seems to be great, although my Ele Shammy friend would disagree. RNG also seems to be smiling on our raid, so far both me and the other rogue have had both one hand axe drops. Our ten man raid is way overloaded with people who share the same or similar loot (two rogues, two druids, three hunters, one Death Knight who all regularly raid), but despite this I've already got a few drops.

Today was also my birthday, and I treated myself by spending my 95 badges on the Tier 10 head. People have really disliked most of the rogue helms in Wrath, and this is true to form. I actually love them, I think they really stand out unlike most classes who have very generic designs. Considering I mainly got the head to show off my gigantic e-peen, I'm very happy and will be AFK'ing in Ironforge to show off. I've also switched to Axe-Axe spec, the first time I've not had Fist-Dagger in this expansion. I have to say changing to such a simple rotation is going to take me some time to get familiar with. Thanks to some of my guildies who made my birthday pretty enjoyable, tears and all.

Christmas and New Year has really made our raid team inconsistent though. Last week we PuG'd three healers and this week one healer and the other two guildies in off-specs (blue gear and all). Despite this things have not been too bad. Last week we cleared ICC fairly comfortably. This week we started late and didn't really have the correct composition or gear to down Saurfang. People do seem to be needlessly tense though, I'm sure if we can kill General Vezax on our first ever attempt, we don't need practice on interrupting. Still can't complain and raids should be back to normal from next week.